Education ministry should stick to its guns on mock exams' ban

Students during a past national examination at Mombasa's M.M.Shah and M.V.Shah Academy. [Maarufu Mohamed, Standard]

The Ministry of Education has enforced a ban on mocks and joint exams. Two expert teams which inquired into the possible reasons for schools' unrest recommended a ban on all inter-school exams. The recommendation of the teams came against a backdrop of school riots across the country.

Consequently, the Ministry of Education issued a circular outlawing jointly ran exams among schools. In a letter dated July 6, current Education PS Belio Kipsang called the attention of stakeholders in education to the earlier circular which he insisted was still in force. The PS argued that holding mock and other joint exams was going to interfere with the school calendar.

Despite the move by the ministry being an enforcement of an old policy, many schools were surprised. It's a practice that has taken root in Kenya's educational system and thorough policing must be employed to stop it. The practice of mock and joint exams adds to an already stressful life of learners who must contend with numerous internal exams. Last year, a head teacher attributed the good performance of his school to the many tests that pupils did. He disclosed that his school administered at least 150 exams before presenting candidates for KCPE.

If you have exams like those, then add mocks and joint exams, there is no time left for learning to take place. Those opposed to the ban, mostly teachers, argue that mock exams act as the final push to help learners improve their performance in national exams.

While others have vouched for these exams on the grounds that they help learners acclimatise with the exam environment. These two arguments are weak considering that the best way to prepare learners for national exams is through proper coverage of the syllabus and not frequent exams and revision that aim at drilling rather than educating the minds of learners.

Another argument I find absurd from the proponents of joint exams is that they afford weaker schools a chance to test their abilities against academic giants. The weakness of this argument is based on the fact that it shifts the purpose of education from a social activity that should create harmony to divisive competition that breeds rivalry and enmity among a community of schools.

Worse still, joint exams don't come cheap. Parents are required to pay for them. This contradicts government policy on free primary and subsidised secondary education. Besides, the business of producing joint and mock exams is purely commercial. It is about the number of pockets that are lined in the process of processing and administering the exams. In most cases, teachers are not involved in setting and preparing the marking schemes. They are bought. In such cases, the exams don't connect to the immediate experience that learners get in class.

Schools should utilise educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom's three pillars of effective learning instead of bombarding learners with tests that don't add value to their educational lives. The three pillars, according to Bloom, are cognitive, effective and psychomotor.

Under the cognitive domain, Bloom calls attention to the need to shift focus from mere assessment practices that simply require regurgitation of facts to a clear hierarchical order from lowest to highest level of cognition. Effective domain comes in to take care of the feelings, attitudes, emotions and behaviour of learners. In this sense, good education must develop good attitudes and values in learners.

Lastly, the psychomotor concerns the physical or manual skills which schools should help learners to develop. They include arts, sports, drawing, dancing to name but a few. To assess the above domains, teachers should use assessment as part of learning to detect progress in learning, assessment that gathers evidence for purposes of feedback and self-assessment where learners have a chance to understand themselves and their own abilities.

This is the kind of holistic education every child must get. Learning should not be paused to pave the way for a marathon of tests, mocks and joint exams.

Mr Musanga is a philosopher. [email protected]